Advertised, Expectations and Actual

David Byrd

David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.

We were busy this weekend so food was rather pedestrian, pizza for both Friday and Saturday. I did prepare a nice spring salad for each meal. However, I prepared one dish that was outstanding, Seared Ahi Tuna and Mexican Rice with Achiote Sauce. Over the last year, I discovered achiote sauce and I have embraced it wonderful flavor with zeal. Every pantry that explores Mexican cooking should have achiote sauce, powder or paste and adobo. Achiote is the parent plant for annatto seeds and best known for creating a brilliant red dye for Mexican foods. Adobo is mixture of powdered garlic, onion, cumin, and oregano. Utilizing these ingredients adds authenticity to your Mexican cooking that paprika, salt and pepper cannot achieve. You will also discover that I use prepared Taco seasoning in a pinch but I am also sharing a very good taco seasoning mixture. I like my tuna rare, especially when it is sushi grade. Therefore, the cooking time is a very brief 2 minutes per side in a hot skillet. Finally, the rice was a very pleasant surprise. I used leftover rice, which I think works best for this dish. So two recipes today, Mexican Seared Ahi Tuna and Mexican Rice with Achiote Sauce. Enjoy!

Broadband is not as Advertised.

This blog is advertised as having an original recipe a week and a discussion of news and information affecting the IP community three times a week. Your expectations, from the comments and discussions I have received from people, have been met. However, the according to the long anticipated broadband report from the FCC, delivered broadband is not as advertised. According to the FCC's Broadband Performance Technical Paper, consumers are receiving only 50% of advertised speeds. Interestingly, the report concludes that for the most part Americans are satisfied by these failed efforts to meet advertised speeds.

As a person responsible for sales of a VoIP/SIP Trunking product, I am not satisfied and many of our customers are not satisfied. Many SMBs attempt to use DSL products for their Internet access and VoIP solutions. Most of the time, they are satisfied with the Internet access as jitter and latency do not noticeably impact their daily business activities. However, when voice is added to the mix and there is a need for predictable, high-speed bandwidth, they often discover the true nature of the delivered broadband product.

Broadvox will remain a bring your own broadband (BYOB) Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) but we now offer a greater array of quality broadband products. Only by adding these products, have we been able to address the multitude of broadband issues faced by our SMB customers. I read the summary of the FCC report with a bit of disappointment as it does not state a requirement for broadband carriers to meet their advertised speeds. However, on a positive note, there is tacit acknowledgement that its previous definition of broadband is too low and does not meet the near term needs of most Americans. That is progress.